From the Huffington Post:
I won't get into the details of the conditions at New Square Meats; if you're reading this, odds are you likely have a sense of what they might have involved. One of the basic, primary laws of Kashrut implies cleanliness: there is no eating of bottom-feeders, no partaking of animals that chew their cud and don't have cloven hoofs, no noshing on beasts that wallow in mud baths. Animals under the laws of Kashrut also may not be slaughtered if they are unconscious; among the supposed health benefits of this practice (like it or hate it) is the elimination of potentially sick and/or infectious animals from getting into the food supply. Theoretically.
So how could New Square Meats, which is itself affiliated with the Skver Hasidim--a sect that has repeatedly run afoul of the law--so obviously flout not only the religious dietary laws that they are supposed to be adhering to, but government regulations as well?
First, take religion completely out of the equation (since they've already blown a big fat Bronx cheer in the face of kashrut).
New Square Meats recently received a $1.62 million grant from New York's Empire State Development Corporation to help subsidize the cost of building a new, larger slaughterhouse near the one that has just been shut down; they received the money without obtaining the approvals from local town and county planning departments:
As the Forward reported recently, the slaughterhouse, New Square Meats, was already under fire for its attempt to build a bigger plant, five times the size of its current one, close to New Square's border with the town of New Hempstead. The proposed 26,250 square foot slaughterhouse would cost $3 million. Some local officials were particularly upset by the fact that New Square Meats had received a $1.62 million grant from New York's Empire State Development Corporation to help subsidize the new building without getting approval first from the county- or town-planning departments.
What is clear is that where New Square is concerned, the government--at least at the state level--has simply looked the other way for almost an entire decade; the New Square slaughterhouse that was just shut down had been selling uninspected birds since 2002.
Another public authority. Another horrible waste of taxpayer money.
WE NEED THE FEDS!